Why A Campaign For Abolition Is Necessary

We are the only campaign group that is calling for the abolition of the BBC – that is to say, our goal is that the BBC should cease to exist.  All other campaigns demand something less than this, normally one or a combination of the following:

1. that the BBC’s funding should be reformed through ending the TV licence;

2. that the Royal Charter should be revoked and the Corporation should be commercialised; or,

3. that the BBC should somehow stop being biased.

Starting with 3, we do not believe it is possible for any media organisation to be unbiased.  The goal is unrealistic.  The BBC is biased, but this is perfectly understandable: it reflects the people who work for it.  The BBC has to be defended somewhat on this point because once it tries to become ‘unbiased’, it will be playing a fool’s game in which it can’t please anybody.  We do criticise BBC bias, indeed it is at the centre of our concerns, but only on the basis that it reveals the shallowness of the Corporation’s notional goal of impartiality.  The Corporation has been set an impossible public mission that looks more and more chimeric as the technical and commercial realities of the digital age move apace.

Regarding 2, this is the subject of the latest anti-BBC petition (link - The Tim Price Petition). We have already made it clear that we do not believe this Petition goes far enough. Merely revoking the Royal Charter still leaves us with the BBC as a going concern, and the problems and potential dangers we cover below in relation to 1 also apply to this option.  Nevertheless, we are actively giving this Petition our support as a step in the right direction.  Should the Petition gain sufficient signatures for government attention or even be considered for parliamentary debate, we will be putting the case for abolition very strongly.

Turning to 1, we oppose the TV licence and we support and sympathise with all non-payers.  We believe passive resistance in particular is crucial to the eventual abolition of the BBC, but our point is that there needs to be an overarching strategic alliance for abolition, otherwise all that will happen is that the BBC will be reformed in a way that favours the elites: the worse-case scenario is a Corporation funded out of general taxation, the best-case is a commercialised Corporation funded by advertising or subscriptions, or both.  

Either 'reformist' funding scenario fails to solve the real problems.  The Corporation would be entrenched in British public life under a reformed structure, leaving us in a worse position than before.  In some ways, a fully-commercial BBC would be the worst of all outcomes because a revitalised Corporation could easily attract investment and unfairly dominate commercial broadcasting as an entirely profit-making enterprise.  This would be on the back of investments made over decades by the taxpayer, more or less at the point of a gun.

We come back, then, to the real problems, which are that:

(i). the BBC manifestly cannot fulfil its public mission;

(ii). the BBC is a subversive organisation that is undermining the country; 

(iii). the BBC is an archaic monolith, modelled on social-democratic era institutions and unresponsive to its putative market; and,

(iv). the BBC is too large and dominant.  

The 'reformers' who complain about the TV licence or BBC bias do have a point, and we are not trying to start an argument with them, but our aim shouldn't be to help the BBC by reforming it to make it run better and thereby cause even more damage to the country.  The BBC is an enemy bureaucracy and a waste of money.  Wouldn't it be better and fairer to dismantle the BBC and return the money recovered and saved to the public?  We think so.

Is abolition a realistic goal?  Emphatically yes!  We have seen with Brexit that populist campaigns can work.  Our aim is to persuade a major political party to adopt complete abolition of the BBC as its policy.  This in turn can only be achieved by creating a popular momentum in favour of abolition.